I am more than willing to share the few stories that I have of
mom's history with you and anyone else on this site. What I am really
hoping for is that either yourself or someone else surfing this site
will have some more detailed stories about my mother. I crave
information from those times.

My mom (Katharine Joy Merritt-Moore[ went by the name of Joy])
never spent much time recounting stories of that earlier life. She
talked briefly of towing targets and having her aircraft hit in such a
matter-of-fact fashion as to have me believe that it was no big deal.
She recounted a couple of times to me an occasion where she litterally
trimmed a hedge with the propellers of her airplane much to the shegrin
of her instructor. Just what they were flying, I don't recall. But, I
distinctly remember that she said "props". She would occassionally
recount riding in the nose of a B-24 on landing as one of her favorite
thrills. Watching the tarmac come up to within a couple of feet of the
glass with someone else at the controls. I liken this to crewmen on
aircraft carriers who stand at the end of the catapult foor
thrills.

I don't know if there is a place to go for copies of the pilot's
logs, but I would love to see just how many hours she had in each type
of aircraft. We recently were honored with the presence of the
Colling's Foundation's B-24 & B-17. I commented to the pilot that
he was probably the first person I had met with more time in the 17
than my mother. His response was "probably not". Even though he had
flown 30+ missions, the average mission was maybe seven hours, totaling
only 210 hours plus thier training time. Far less than most of the
ferry pilots who never saw any combat.

Recently, at the Watsonville antique fly-in, I was talking with a
gentleman from the antique aircraft museum in San Martin, California.
He had been a radio operator on a B-17. He recounted to me a story of
stopping at an unfamiliar base to refuel. The captain and first officer
had gone into the ops building to update their flight plan and check
weather reports. Himself and the navigator had stayed with the airplane
awaiting the fuel truck.

They watched two P-47's execute a high speed fly-by at low altitude
then peel off into the pattern and land side-by-side. The 47's taxied
up and parked along side of their aircraft. When the pilots removed
thier caps to reveal long tresses, these men were amazed to see women
pilots.

The two women also entered the ops building. They came out ten
minutes later, climbed into another B-17 accross the line from them and
took off. For those of us who grew up around the WASP's, this seems to
be no big deal. When you take the time to realize that male pilots were
type rated for particular aircraft and that was pretty much all that
they flew, it was a big deal. The WASP's had to be able to move from
type to type with little or no consideration. Something most male
pilots would'nt even have considered.

"Joy" went from Sweetwater basic training,
class 43-7, to Mather Army Air Field in Sacremento, Ca., for training on B-25s,
to March AAF, and finally to Las Vegas Army Air Base.